Labelling the ABC unpatriotic is the classic turn of the demagogue

It has been just on three weeks since prime minister Tony Abbott had a go at the ABC for a story it aired in which asylum seekers accused Navy personnel of deliberately burning their hands during an operation on the sea. Since then Abbott has announced an inquiry into efficiency at the national broadcaster, and further details about the maritime contretemps emerged via the Sydney Morning Herald, the Fairfax Media broadsheet. ''You would like the national broadcaster to have a rigorous commitment to truth and at least some basic affection for the home team,'' said Abbott, dog-whistling for the benefit of the mouth-breathers who read the Daily Telegraph and listen to 2GB, enacting a kind of fascist witch-hunt where those who are outside the tent can be attacked at will by anyone with a stick.

Abbott's tactic - labelling the ABC unpatriotic - is the classic turn of the demagogue and the tabloid media took the bait with the eagerness you would expect from the supine toadies of the monied classes. Xenophobia is one of the tried-and-true methods conservative governments use to convince the proletariat to support it despite the fact that they operate in the interests of quite other classes within the community. Hitler didn't invent this kind of othering, of course, as I learnt recently when I read a book by Simon Schama on the French Revolution: placing your enemies outside the protective haven of the patria was the first step in achieving their eventual elimination. And it's no accident that Schama placed prominently on the cover of his book an image of an axe fashioned out of a faggot - the symbol of the fascio that would be adopted by Hitler's model, Mussolini. You only have to hint that someone or some organisation stands outside the community in order for the dogs to start barking, as the Murdoch press immediately did in its eagerness to toady to its favourite son.

But the debate is not over. It's one thing for Abbott to demonise the ABC - criticising the ABC is a kind of knee-jerk reaction of conservatives when they need a whipping boy to draw attention from their own misdeeds - but Fairfax is another matter. As a broadly-held public company, Fairfax is not liable to claims of bias except by the loony fringe Abbott has no need to convince of anything.

The prime minister does not understand what a free press means, and it's hardly surprising. The Liberals early adopted the habits of the military in order to shut down debate on the treatment of asylum seekers: the military is expert in silencing discussion of things it finds inconvenient. It's not surprising that the prime minister resents a free press because he's not the first to do so: Paul Keating famously made sure that Murdoch dominated Australia's media in an attack on Fairfax that has turned out to have been demonstrably less than wise, given Murdoch's preference for conservative politicians. But a free press has a benefit far greater than the immediate personal biases of venal politicians like Abbott. It offers the community an essential safety valve because only a truly free press can pull together credentials adequate to counterbalancing the lies perpetrated by men like him.